It’s at this time of every school year that we start looking back at the highlights from the past nine months.
And we’ll start doing that this week as we honor nine outstanding athletes who were named All-Region athletes of the year in their spring sport. Those profiles will begin this week, continue next week and culminate with the naming of our multi-sports athletes of the year.
But this is also the time when we like to look back at the biggest stories in high schools during the 2017-18 school year.
Normally, we compile that list. And then we catch heat from people who disagree with our picks, insisting we overlooked some stories and accomplishments.
But this time, instead of letting us do all the picking, we decided to let the readers pick the top prep stories of 2017-18 school year, in a manner of speaking.
So I looked at data and found the most read high school sports stories on Columbian.com of the past school year.
Now this isn’t an exact science by any means. But it does give you an idea of the stories that drew readers’ attention.
For this list, I focused on feature stories on people and issues and event coverage. Not listed here are the polls — like athlete of the week or All-Region fan voting — which were very popular and drew a lot clicks. Also excluded were the also-popular Live Chat updates we ran during last football season.
Also left off this list was a story we did on smoke from area fires driving all prep practices indoors last September. It was a story people wanted to read with good information, but not really a memorable moment or highlight of the school sports year.
So here’s the list, and I’ll warn you in advance, it’s football-heavy. That’s not a surprise to those of us who cover prep sports. We know when it comes to popularity, there’s football and then there’s everything else. This list will reflect that.
So if you are not into football, you might want to ski down to the bottom, where I mention the most popular non-traditional football prep stories of the year.
So we’ll start at the bottom of our list and work up.
No. 10 — Evergreen first-year lineman a beast in trenches
This is a story by Meg Wochnick on Serge Rusnak, an ex-gymnast who decided to give football a try for his senior season at Evergreen and became a key player for the Plainsmen.
No. 9 — Hockinson football reaches 2A title game
Nothing like a state title run to get readers fired up. The Hawks were frequent contributors to this top-10 list, and Meg’s coverage of their 53-30 win over West Valley of Yakima in the state semifinals was their first entry.
No. 8 — Camas vs. Union: Nuff Said
This wasn’t the game story of this east county rivalry. This was the preview feature by Meg on the history of the Union-Camas rivalry and what it meant to the players competing.
No. 7 — Triumph of the Titans: Union beats Camas
This was the game story from Union-Camas football. And another Meg Wochnick story. The Titans went 73 yards in the final four minutes to beat Camas on JoJo Siofele’s 5-yard TD run. It snapped Camas’ 58-game regular-season winning streak, and gave the Titans the league title.
No. 6 — Canon Racanelli, All-Region player of year
Hockinson’s second entry in this list, and another Meg Wochnick story, was the profile on the Hawks’ quarterback who was The Columbian’s All-Region football player of the year after leading Hockinson to the state title.
No. 5 — Dusty Anchors, Ridgefield softball coach
This list is not all Meg. Andy Buhler did a wonderful job profiling Ridgefield softball coach Dusty Anchors and his decision to continue to coach the Spudders despite being diagnosed with terminal heart disease. An emotional story of a coach, his players and a community rallying together in difficult times.
No. 4 — Hockinson wins state football championship
Our coverage of Hockinson’s 35-22 win over Tumwater for the 2A state football championship was a team effort that included Andy Buhler and Micah Rice. But it was Meg’s game story that drew the most views as the Hawks capped a dream season in the Tacoma Dome.
No. 3 — Camas rallies to beat Coeur d’Alene
The most-read football game story of the year wasn’t a state championship game, but a non-league game in September. On Sept. 22 at Doc Harris Stadium, the Papermakers scored 14 points in the final 64 seconds to beat Coeur d’Alene (Idaho) and their UW-commit quarterback Colson Yankoff. Andy Buhler captured the mayhem as Kyle Allen hit Drake Owen for the winning touchdown on fourth-and-goal from the 4 as Camas won 28-25.
No. 2 — Lessons in local high school anthem protests
In his column, Micah Rice touched on a hot-button issue as several local high school football players protested social injustice in their own way — some kneeling, others holding up a fist — during the playing of the national anthem. Micah covered the issue with thought-provoking opinions from both sides.
No. 1 — Healing with Hoops: Nasseen Gutierrez
Meg Wochnick did an outstanding job on a difficult story on Nasseen Gutierrez, a Columbia River basketball player who, along with his siblings, was left orphaned by the murder-suicide of his parents. Gutierrez found solace from his difficult situation by becoming one of the top players for the Chieftains.
Other stories
To show that we’re not all about football, here’s a look at a few of the most-read non-traditional football stories of the past school year.
- No. 5 — Meg Wochnick profiled the 1938 Vancouver High boys basketball team that won the state title and the legacy the Trappers left.
- No. 4 — I caught up with Annie Kvamme, a senior at the Washington School for the Deaf who listed among her many accomplishments becoming a starter on the offensive line for the Terriers football team.
- No. 3 — A profile by Micah Rice on Skyview’s Alex Schumacher as he was selected as our All-Region boys basketball player of the year.
- No. 2 — A profile by Andy Buhler on Camas’ Maddie Kemp, The Columbian’s All-Region girls soccer player of the year.
- No. 1 — A state champion coach steps down, and it’s big news. That was the case when Ty Singleton left as coach of the King’s Way Christian baseball program he helped launch and lead to a state title three years later.
